Tremble, Termites, Dog Is On Your Trail

April 24, 1986|By Brad Bailey, Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — Once Danny`s come to town, they don`t stand a chance.

They can crawl right back into the woodwork, but it won`t do them any good. Because wherever they go, they leave that unmistakable scent, and it`s a smell that Danny can never forget: the smell of dirt, destruction, decay, and of pale white cold-blooded bodies hiding from sunlight.

It`s the smell of homewreckers -- the smell of termites.

Danny detects termites. He wears the special collar of a termite cop.

But you try to talk to him about his job, you`ll be barking up the wrong tree, because Danny`s a special breed. In fact, he`s a beagle -- has been since the day he was born.

Talk instead to Robert Outman.

Outman is Danny`s boss back at headquarters, the guy who taught the young pup everything his nose knows about termite-tracking and termination.

Outman, of TADD Services Corp., brought Danny in from Belmont, Calif., to work as a sort of permanent consultant to Dallas Pest and Termite Services -- which will make his expertise available to other area exterminators.

Danny will stay with the firm until he earns his retirement -- at 56, in human years.

Danny took his first Dallas contract free of charge last week, a mission impossible heretofore, snooping out ALL the grubby little sneaks from their hideouts inside a 130,000-foot Goodwill Industries facility here.

A few years ago, the bugsy mob moved in on Goodwill and took over on a Vegas-size scale.

These underworld types have been using the Goodwill front ever since -- and sides and rear, too. Due to the scope of the facility, exterminators had been fighting a losing battle.

Until Danny came along, however, nobody knew the full extent of their underground operations. Turns out the building`s insides were riddled with termite holes.

How slimy and low-rent are these slugs?

In the chapel alone, they were eating the altar right out from under the chaplain, Danny discovered, and they were even building a tunnel to infiltrate the organ.

Whether Danny`s nose led to complete extermination won`t be known for some time. But this can be said: When the exterminators come, it`ll be a massacre. They`ll die like flies.

It won`t be pretty, but then, extermination never is.

But it`s Danny`s life.

Several years ago, Outman, a nationally known animal conditioner, was buying a house. Had an exterminator come out, take a look. Exterminator snooped around, certified it termite-free.

After he left -- and after Outman had already bought the place -- Outman did a little poking around on his own, and poked right through a board on the porch.

Dum-da-dum-dum.

Rotting and infested to the core. The little creeps were building condos inside his support beams and putting in whole subdivisions in the walls. And then Outman fine-tuned his peepers to glom the small print on the sales contract.

``Aargh,`` was Outman`s reaction, ``they GOT me.`` The cops and the courts couldn`t help him. No legal recourse.

Subsequent investigation revealed that human termite inspectors, usually using nothing much more advanced than screwdrivers and flashlights, can only detect about 20 percent of existing infestations, Outman said.

With termite takeovers costing about $1.17 billion in the United States every year, Outman figured policing them was a job that belonged in more perceptive paws.

Outman, with a list of bio-engineering and animal behavior and conditioning lauds as long as your arm, figured: If I can train dogs that can smell bombs in airports and drugs in athlete`s lockers, why can`t they sniff out termites in houses?

TADD`s R&D department discovered that beagles, particularly males, could smell `em better than any other small breed, could smell them so well in fact that Outman says their work is insured and guaranteed for $1 million. Out of the 15,000 inspections conducted around the country by the 30 or so mutts from TADD, Outman said he`s only had one claim filed.

The company slogan sounds like something coming soon to a theater near you. It`s, ``TADD: The Ultimate Detector.`` But it may be more than just a slogan: Rick Rogers, a trained entomologist with Dallas Pest Services, was himself planning to purchase a house. With his own hard-earned money at stake, before signing the contracts, he gave the house an unusually intensive, firsthand inspection.

His expert conclusion: Termite-free.

But just for the heck of it, when Danny came to town last week, Rogers took him through the place.

Dum-da-dum-dum.

The contracts remain unsigned, thanks to Danny, and Rogers figures his own hang-dog embarrassment was a small price to pay.

In a blind test with Danny at Goodwill, a reporter hid a small container of live termites in a large conference room behind a garbage can while Danny was out of the room hiding his eyes and nose. Upon returning to the room, rather than just following the baseboards with his nose, as per his usual working habit, Danny took off toward the can like a black-and-tan bullet and started digging like crazy.